Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

Elementary Education Program

Formal Observation Reflection

Directions: Complete the reflection questions and submit your response to your observer prior to having a post-
conference to discuss the observation. If a conference is held immediately after the observation you will submit
your responses to the observer the following day via email.

Name: Lauren Stone Date: 4-7-2017

1. To what extent were learning outcomes appropriate and achievable to your students?

I believe that they were appropriate and achievable my students did amazing.
2. How effective were your instructional strategies? What changes would you make in
your instructional approaches if you taught this lesson again? Why?

I believe that they were effective in terms of making my expectations clear and
giving students the tools and information they needed in order to have a
productive debate. I would absolutely change how I had the students arranged
during the debate. I had the students sitting/standing with the side of their peers
that they agreed with which was fine at first, but after the first round it became
problematic. If I taught this again I would have the students sitting as an
audience to listen to the speakers.
3. Evaluate the effectiveness of your oral and written communication with students.
(Consider how well you communicated learning objectives, clarity of directions, use of standard English, quality of
questions and effectiveness of discussion techniques.)

I feel that my communication with the students was effective. Again, the main
issue was with students that were not speaking were having side conversations
and although many of the conversations were actually on-topic, there were
definitely some that werent and I probably could have addressed this better.
4. Evaluate the level of student engagement in your lesson . (Consider how you presented the
content/skills, the activities and assignments for students, grouping of students, and structure and pacing of the
lesson.)

The majority of the students were actually really engaged, even more so than I
was expecting. They wanted to keep speaking and keep presenting another
point or another life experience and were all disappointed when I concluded the
debate. This was really exciting for me and I highly enjoyed the debate and
everything my students had to say.

5. How effectively did you use instructional materials, resources, and/or technology?
 I feel that my use of instructional materials was effective. I had students read
the article on Google Classroom (they have 1-1 iPads) where I recommended
that they use the highlight tool to mark facts/points that they agreed with or
disagreed with so that they could bring them up in the debate. I instructed
students to condense their thinking/chosen facts after reading and prepare
them for the debate either using pencil and paper or what they had highlighted
on their iPads. This seemed to work really well as all of the students are very
comfortable using Google Classroom and there were no apparent issues with
students reading the article or selecting their points.
6. To what extent were your assessment strategies effective? What changes would you
make in your assessment approach if you taught this lesson again? Why?
My assessment for this lesson was really informal. I simply gauged their
comprehension and ability to cite textual evidence based on what they were
saying in the debate. Their ability to connect it with their personal lives was not
something I required of them but I did encourage it. In the future, I would have a
class list with check-points for each student so that I could more accurately
remember what they said and could provide even more feedback than what I
provided during the debate.

7. To what extent was your feedback to students accurate, substantive, constructive,

specific, and/or timely?

I would say that if anything, my feedback was timely and constructive. After
each speaker, I would make a positive comment about what they had said and
sometimes leverage their point into further discussion. In the future, I would try
to be even more specific (I feel that my compliments might have gotten a bit
general) and I would even provide written feedback afterwards to further their
thinking and give them more encouragement.
8. To what extent did the classroom management and environment contribute to student
learning? (Consider your classroom procedures, your use of physical space, and the students conduct.)

As mentioned, the biggest problem was the location of the students during the
debate. I feel that this definitely reflected poorly on my classroom management
as it became very difficult to actually manage the whole class while trying to
give my full attention to the speaker. Im sure it certainly affected student
learning as many students were not listening to the speaker but instead having
side conversations either planning something they wanted to say, or talking
about something off-topic. In the future, I would ideally have all students
listening to all speakers so that they could respond even more to things that
specific people said and use I agree, I disagree language even more.
9. Did you make modifications to your lesson plan during the lesson? If so, what were
they and what motivated these changes?
During the lesson, I did have some distracted students move closer to me and
in more of an audience position in hopes that they would pay more attention to
the speakers. This was obviously motivated by their lack of engagement.

10. Was your Teaching Behavior Focus goal met?

For the most part I believe so. It was a positive learning environment and my
students conducted themselves very well. Having this debate sparked their
interest in this culturally relevant topic and they continued to talk about it even
after the lesson had ended.